Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Hey all - welcome to May's Club Scrap Blog Hopcelebrating the awesome kit - Adirondacks! I can't tell you how excited I am about this kit. The colors, images, papers, everything about it is so versatile, down to earth and just plain me! I couldn't ask for anything more.

I made 3 different layouts using various pieces of this kit which I'm very excited to share with you (finally!!). Here we go -

My guys getting ready... they clean up pretty good!

This is the church where we had the wedding and reception. It has a nice little annex with a kitchen, bathrooms and a basement (where the guys got ready). Morgan's grandparents used to have a farm adjoining this property so she's grown up around it and was thrilled to be able to have the wedding here.

Finally, my favorite layout... I have had the wooden Mr & Mrs piece since I found out they were getting married. I knew I'd use it at some point for something and I'm so glad I had it. It meshed with this kit perfectly. The arrows were added using the funky stencil included in the kit which I inked with Club Scraps white pigment ink.

I also had these "wedding rings" in my stash as well...those I've had for years and years. I've used them from time to time on wedding cards I've made but I finally got to use them on a very special layout. The raffia was included in the kit as well.

These are some of the "fancy" pictures the kids had taken after the ceremony. They were my favorites of the bunch.

You can see they were spelling LOVE with their fingers.

I hope you've enjoyed the layouts I have created, I had such fun with this kit...I wish I had 3 or 4 more of these kits so I could just continue to create. It's amazing how inspired you get when creating with such lovely papers.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Thought I'd continue to share a couple more layouts from the wedding book. These ones all center around the dress.

The first layout contains photos of all of the different dresses Morgan tried on. Several members of her family were present as well as Mom and I. Of course everyone had their favorites that they wanted her to try on. After a couple exhausting hours she chose the very first dress she tried on - LOL!!

Of course you can tell I wrote out part of the title...just wish I would have used pencil lines so it wasn't a bit crooked. Oh well...it still tells the story I wanted it to.

David's Bridal has the bride ring a bell when she's chosen "The Dress". This was a photo of her ringing the bell with her veil, dress, jewelry and all. I included a photo of the girl who helped with all of the changes, accessories and questions. She was great.

This LO are just a few pics of after she chose the dress....

I left room for her to journal on both sets of LO's so she could add her thoughts.

These were some of my favorite lo's because it was such a memorable day. Since I don't have any girls of my own this was very special to me to be invited to enjoy such a joyful event.

I keep wanting to try gelli plate printing. It is a little messy and my work area is not too big (and crowded with stuff). So it has held me back from trying it. I also just ordered the distress oxide and am looking forward to playing with them. Have a great day Roni!

Congratulations Donna!

Please e-mail me your snail mail addy so I can get your goodies in the mail.

Sunday, May 28, 2017

You all know that I've been making a wedding album for the kids. I have been sharing lo's here and there but since I gave the book to them the internet has been down. I've been dying to share the rest of them with you! Luckily I had a few posts with them scheduled way ahead so they posted automatically so you've been able to see a few of them. Today I wanted to share 2 more lo's - the cover lay-out and the lo of the invites.

This is the first page of the album...I loved this picture of the kids in front of the church. The writing on the right side is die-cuts (Month & Day - Sizzix; Numbers - MFT), the sparklie paper (American Crafts) and shimmery background papers (Bazzill) were leftover from making the invites. The blue and magenta cardstock is from Club Scrap.

This is the next layout in the book...It must be weird to include this in a wedding album because when I searched for other lo's trying to get ideas for it I couldn't find any! I don't care, I thought it would be something they would enjoy having to look back on.

The lacy pieces are something I've had for years. I bought a box full of "samples" from an estate sale - the old lady made dresses and from what I understand these were all pieces she could order to add to dresses. This is the "folder card I made - it opens up and has the invitation on the left and a pocket on the right side that held the goodies on the page below...

And these are the pieces. The invite, the wedding dress piece is actually the return RSVP postcard and the other 2 are additional info and map. The stamp beside the 2 hearts was actually the stamp off of our invitation. Just another bit that I thought would be fun to include. Again the shimmery background cardstock is from the invitations, the blue and magenta cardstock is from Club Scrap. The lace is some vintage lace I bought down in L'ville at an antique store a long time ago.

BTW, I never got a chance to tell you all how it went when I gave 'em the album...They loved it and someone commented on one of the posts that she bet there were tears involved with the gifting... She was right! But all happy tears :) Made me feel good!

Friday, May 26, 2017

Just have to vent a bit about the monopoly of internet service providers in small rural towns...

First off, I have to say it stinks not having internet service. I didn't realize how much I have come to rely and use it. We've had a really rocky Spring weather wise...LOTS of storms which is kind of unusual this early in the year but that's another story. Well, unbeknownst to us during one of the storms at the beginning of May lightening struck the pole behind our house and took out part of the phone lines - I learned yesterday it takes 2 lines to make the phone work and the internet will "sort of" work on one line. Well, obviously not because we've been having terrible trouble with ours all month long. It was so slow that it barely even registered on their speed test (.16 download and .05 upload - that's worse than dial up!).

After fighting with Frontier trying to get someone to take a look at it because it was soooooooo slow... Nobody believed me! I called 4-5x and spent hours on hold - every time I called they talked me through this test and that with no luck (mind you I preformed the same tests every stinkin time). They said oh I'd have to talk to tech and they'd transfer me into oblivion then I'd get disconnected so I'd have to start all over again.

I finally told the guy on Monday if they didn't fix it I was going to drop them. Funny - after about 20 minutes of going through the entire story he FINALLY put in a service request. The guy came out yesterday and said some little module on the pole was fried - replaced it and we're up and running.

WHY couldn't they do this in the first place?!?!? It took a threat of dropping their crappy service to get action. The service guy told me that he's been hearing that from a lot of the places he visits. Frontier is the largest internet provider in our area which has too many customers on really old equipment and not enough techs (originally 275+ now 62 per the repair guy). Obviously they don't care because they have you by the tail. Wish there was good coverage everywhere and not just in the big cities.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

This month the Club Scrap Artist Team was given a fun challenge...Mash Up 2 or more Club Scrap kits on a single project! I love these types of things, it's always so much fun to see what you can come up with. These are a couple LO's from the wedding album I made for the kids. I gave it to Morgan last week and she loved it! Now I can finally start sharing the rest of the lo's I made - LOL!!

For my first lay-out I actually used goodies from 4 kits...the pink/flamingoes and cut-a-part pieces are all from the Paradise Kit (11-15); the Blue cardstock (on the main photo) is from Cantina (07-15); the pastel Blue, Pink and Yellow cardstock is from Picnic (07-14) and finally the gemstones are from the Sunflowers kit (08-16).

These photos were from the rehearsal.

My second lay-out combines papers from 3 different kits - the background papers, cut-aparts are from The Blues (05-15), the pink is from Dahlia (04-16) and the cardstock used for the letter die cuts is from Fossils - not sure of the date on that one as I bought a partial kit from a friend.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

M is for Moravian Star Lantern! Not long ago I saw a post on Facebook featuring all sorts of exotic Moravian Star Lanterns and I instantly knew I wanted to attempt to make one. As luck would have it this month one of our themes/challenges at Imagine was “M is for….”.

I knew I wanted a flat sided one because I wanted to be able to fit one of those battery operated tea lights inside and I needed to be able to build a little shelf inside to hold the light. I couldn't find a pattern that suited my needs so I ended up making one of my own. The entire piece is made out of paper and Vertigo film so it is very light weight. The points of the star are 3 sided and contain a magenta, blue and green Vertigo panel. The gold is Delicata Golden Glitz ink and the green point on the right side is hinged with velcro for access to the light inside! I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. At the moment I have it hanging in my bedroom, I think I'm going to make 2 more for a nice little grouping.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Today I want to share a pocket letter that I created using Hello Sentiments (JC-02110), Doodle Flowers (JC-20107) and Be Joyful Bird. Here's how I made them....

1. Spritz on Fireworks! and a bit of irRESISTible Pico Embellishers.

2. Stencil on text and various designs using Radiant Neon inks and a sponge dauber.

3. While the background is drying time to work on the stamped images... Stamp and tint the mason jars on vellum using Blue Hawaii StazOn ink.

4. Stamp mason jar on each card as a guide where to add flowers/stems as well as placement for the vellum mason jar.

5. Ink up cardstock for a bit of die-cut grass.

6. Stamp and color a variety of flowers and a couple birds. To get a reverse image of the bird I stamped the bird on my craft mat using VersaFine ink then placed a piece of cardstock over the image. Burnish a bit with my hand, lift and ta-da! Revere image ready to go.

The sentiments were all stamped on white cardstock then trimmed and added to each card. I love the lavender sprigs.

Here you can see how nice the reverse image bird turned out. Most of the flowers were stamped on white cardstock, colored, fussy cut then mounted on the ATC's in layers.

It's so much fun coloring with the Memento Dual Tip Markers. You can lay down a darker color on the craft mat, pick it up with a lighter shade then color to create a nice blended effect. It is demonstrated best on the Heart Flower. Tangelo was picked up with Dandelion and Rhubarb Stalk was picked up with Love Letter.

Give Away Time!!

Thanks so much for stopping and be sure to leave comments (one per blog) during these two days of hopping so you can be entered to win a one of two $25 Joy Clair Stamps Gift Cards or one of two $25 Gift Cards from Imagine!!! Winners will be announced on the Joy Clair and Imagine Blogs at the end of the month.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Just been playin with some summery looking stamps lately. Thought I'd share a few with you...

Both made using the same stamp only the top card was colored with Memento Dual Tip Markers and the bottom was colored with Prima Confections Watercolors. I find it fascinating how different an image looks just by using a different coloring medium.

Saturday, May 13, 2017

Have you been seeing the Russian Flower tips all over the place recently? Let me tell you my cake decorating skills will never win awards. Yes, I can bake a great tasting cake but I've never been much on decorating them. Slather the frosting on with a butter knife and I call it good. So I debated long and hard about these tips and finally ordered a set. I was originally just going to purchase a small set of 7 but then I found another set that suited me more...in addition to the flower tips it also had a couple leaf tips and the bags to go with it. Since I have 0 experience with decorating a cake/cupcake I wasn't sure if it was a good idea or not but I figured what the heck...I'd give it a try. I figured I'd treat it like art and pretend I was using gesso or Creative Medium - LOL!!

So, next was finding a recipe to make some nice buttercream frosting. I used this one....Wedding Cupcake Buttercream from Recipe Girl. It seemed pretty fail safe and since I'm not a great baker I wanted to go with easy ;) LOL!!

I made a double batch because I wasn't sure how much it would make and I've read/heard that these tips use lots of frosting. It turned out WONDERFUL - so yummy best frosting I've ever made...well, except for the Pistachio Whip Cream frosting but that's a whole nother beast - not suitable for piping.

I decided to go for the gold on my first shot and mixed up several colors.

In all of the videos and stuff they tell you how to layer the frostings on cling wrap then roll it up. I forgot to take a pic of this laid out but let me tell you, OBVIOUSLY those people in the videos were experienced with this. It is NOT easy to spread the frosting out and hold onto the (@*%( cling wrap to keep it from sliding all over the counter. I think the next time I'm going to use my ATG and tape the stuff down. Anyway, they tell you to apply the outside layer first, next either add a secondary color spread almost to the edges of the first then add the center color right down the center (like a log) then roll it up. I almost got it right - you can see a bit of pink peeking out but that's o.k....

Next you snip off one of the twirled ends and slide it in the bag down to the tip.

I frosted the cupcakes with a tiny amount of plain frosting to give the piped frosting something to hold on to. Some of the videos I watched didn't do this and they had trouble pulling the bag away without the flower coming along with it so I figured this step didn't take long and was worth the effort - like adding a layer of gesso prior to a mixed media or collage project.

And here is my first attempt! Seriously, this is fun - you can see though that they are all different heights. I'm not gonna lie, it takes some practice to know how much you need to squeeze the bag of frosting. I've never piped anything in my life so this was an adventure - LOL!!

I got through 5 cupcakes really well before my frosting got too warm...

Then came this one. Maybe I wasn't holding the bag right or maybe I'm just one hot mamma - the last of the frosting that was in the bag was melting. It made the petals just fold in on themselves.

THEN I added the leaves!!! I am so stinkin' impressed with myself. For someone who has never piped anything in their life I think they turned out pretty darn good!

This is the second batch I made...it was supposed to be dark blue, light blue then a mix in the center but the blues were too close in color that it really doesn't show up well. This does give you an idea on how I layered the colors though.

And here's how these ones turned out. I used a different tip and it didn't take as much frosting as the first tip did. I ended up with 9 of those.

I had a bit of leftover frosting so I just messed around making the orange ones and then I did a couple full of leaves with the green. I have to say that I am really amazed at how easy it was and they actually turned out looking like flowers! So, for all of you out there wondering these tips really do work.

Teach Yourself Visually - Collage & Altered Arts

About Ink Stains

What constitutes a good day in my book? Ink Stains on my fingers! I want to share that good day feeling with you by offering up a variety of card sketches, altered projects & lay-outs, challenges and goodies to get you all Inked up!
If you've got an idea that you'd like to see or challenge for me to try I'd love to hear from you...till then, Ink On My Friends, Ink On!